Can GPs help us to address declining grain and fibre intake?

It’s pretty disturbing to us that Australians are consuming fewer grain foods and only one in two people are consuming enough fibre. Plus with the new finding that most people are not meeting their whole grain daily requirements, it’s evident that we need more education to encourage people to eat more of the right kinds of fibre.

Who better to help us with this than a trusted partner in health and wellness, their GP.

Ok, so here’s the deal - the science is telling us that not all fibres are equal. In fact, it’s cereal fibres and whole grains that are associated with greatest risk reduction in all-cause mortality and other chronic diseases.

Kellogg’s has always been invested in fibre - as one of the largest providers of cereal fibre we believe strongly in its benefits for the nation and the science supports this belief. In an effort to combat further reduction in fibre intake from grains, we’ve been calling on GPs to help spread the message.

We have conducted extensive research with GPs and they have told us that they require more patient tools because they don’t have time to effectively address dietary topics as part of patient consultations. They also identified that fibre is the food topic they talk about most throughout their consultations. This was a fantastic insight for us to work with.

The team at Kellogg’s Nutrition went into full-on creative mode to help develop a beautiful and informative GP patient tool called the ‘Kellogg’s Nutrition Fibre Kit’ to help educate patients on the benefits of fibre and its link to chronic disease prevention.

We used distribution company, SamplesPlus, to deliver the Kellogg’s Nutrition Fibre Kit to 2000 GPs, nationwide who requested to receive it. The kit consisted of a re-fillable folder containing patient education factsheets for five chronic disease conditions. Each sheet provided specific advice on easy ways to incorporate a balance of fibres into the diet to enjoy the health benefits.

To make it even easier for GPs to access the educational material, we partnered with medical software company, HealthShare, to seamlessly deliver the resources to GPs though their desktops, ensuring they were ready for download and printing when necessary as part of the patient consult.

The program has been a resounding success with all 2000 fibre kits being distributed, and many GPs missing out, which means we may have to consider extending the program. We have also had thousands of downloads through HealthShare, which shows that GPs are finding them useful during the patient consultation process.

Later in the year we will be re-filling the folders and expanding the fibre kit distribution, making the patient factsheets available to dietitians.

We can’t wait for the next phase.

Cheers,
Gina

A selection of the factsheets are also available for download here